Thinking Against the Grain

Introduction

We are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried
about by every wind of doctrine; . . . we are to grow up in all aspects
into Him, who is the head, even Christ. —Ephesians 4:14–15

What underlies the atheistic commitment to novel sexual and marital and
political patterns is a stultification of Biblical conscience, an irreligious
redefinition of the good, a profane willset. . . . The Christian world-life
view and the secular world-life view engage as never before in rival conflict
for the mind, the conscience, the will, the spirit, the very selfhood of
contemporary man. Not since the apostolic age has the Christian vanguard
faced so formidable a foe in its claims for the created rationality and
morality of mankind.1 —Carl F. H. Henry

As my wife and I waited in the drive-through lane of a fast food restaurant,
we watched a car pass that had two symbols on the bumper. One was the sign of
the fish, representing Christianity. The other was a sticker promoting “gay
pride.” Assuming that the presence of one or the other of those symbols was
not the result of vandalism, an interfaith marriage, or schizophrenia, that
car bumper symbolizes the philosophical and moral chaos of our time. The owner
of the car seemed to celebrate two worldviews that have always been understood
to be in mutual opposition. This book is for the owner of that car.

As our pastor’s wife waited with her children in a hospital lounge, her daughter
began reading Nickelodeon magazine. Since Nickelodeon is aimed at a pre-adolescent
target audience, this seemed a safe choice of reading material. Then her daughter
showed her an article. The adult writer was recounting her experience at a nudist
colony when she was eight years old. The author’s portrayal of public nudity
was entirely positive. She suggested that everyone should be more open to displaying
their bodies, and more people ought to give public nudity a try. The article
even cited the Bible in support of this philosophy, alluding to the original
nudity of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Our pastor’s daughter has been
homeschooled to think biblically, so she was not convinced by this shameless
effort to promote “the repeal of reticence” among the young.2 This book is for
the many children who read such literature without having developed a biblical
worldview.

Many Christian young people have held certain beliefs as “givens”—assumptions
about God, self, society, and what is right and wrong. These assumptions may
be Bible-based, but they are also second-hand. They were handed down from parents
or church and accepted uncritically. The theological assumptions of these young
people are just that—the result of someone else’s study and thought that they
assumed to be true. However, if those beliefs have not already been challenged,
they soon will be. Our culture is calling into question every absolute and replacing
eternal truth with popular opinion. What’s a Christian to do? Unfortunately,
many compromise with the culture, buying into the myth that much of what the
Bible says is a vestige of a more superstitious era. We should grow out of its
teachings as we grew past belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Other Christians
who are challenged by the culture will irrationally cling to their beliefs,
although they have no idea why those beliefs are superior to the “isms” of our
age. This book is written to provide a third option—the development of an intellectually
coherent and biblically faithful worldview.

A friend told me that his mother describes herself as a Christian, but, he
added, “it’s obvious that she doesn’t know what that means.” He sorrowfully
described his mother as thoroughly secular. Her opinions about everything are
shaped by the culture and not by the Bible. In fact, he said, “She couldn’t
tell you the first thing about the Christian worldview.” This book is also for
my friend’s mother and others like her. In their senior adult years, they still
do not realize how the truths of the Bible intersect with the influential ideas
of our time. They do not expose themselves regularly to the ideas of the Bible,
so the ideas of the culture win by default. Perhaps some of them will pick up
this book and rethink the issues raised.

This book is also written with pastors and other spiritual leaders in mind,
to help them articulate the relevance of Scripture to the people they serve.
They will have to look elsewhere for a more extensive discussion of philosophical
issues, such as modernism and postmodernism. This book is intended as an overview
of contemporary ideologies and their implications, and I have attempted to compensate
for its brevity on complex issues by suggesting further reading resources in
the endnotes.

So, this book has several purposes, but two of these are primary. First,
we would motivate and enable people to think biblically. What does it mean to
think as a Christian, and how does that thought process differ from other common
ways of thinking? Second, we would demonstrate the contours of a consistently
biblical worldview. What are distinguishing benchmarks of a Christian worldview?
What are some practical, or ethical, implications of thinking that is faithful
to the Bible?

Books have been written on either of these two subjects. However, because
philosophy and ethics—thinking and deciding—go together in life, it is appropriate
that they are viewed together in one discussion of Christian thinking. As James
W. Sire has put it, “In the Christian worldview, how we know is intimately related
to how we ought to act. That is, knowledge is so tied to ethics that on the
most important issues of life, knowing the good and doing the good are one and
the same.”3

My hope is that bringing philosophy and ethics together in one book will
be helpful to readers.

While I try to be temperate in language, I feel passionately about the subject
of this book. I serve and speak before local congregations. As I observe members
and leaders of the contemporary church, I do not believe it is an exaggeration
to say that the theological integrity and future direction of the church of
Jesus Christ are in question. Jesus said, “I will build My church” (Matt. 16:18b),
and for those who believe that promise, the future existence of the true church
is not in question. But what will the future visible church look like? Will
its theology remain consistent with historic Christian orthodoxy? Will its teachings
parallel the ideas prevalent in contemporary culture?

Such questions trouble those who love the church and know the culture. Modern
secularists possess the hubris necessary to believe the church should adopt
their values, but those values are connected to a history of consequences. Twentieth
century value systems contributed to two world wars, the Soviet gulags, the
human incinerators of Auschwitz, the killing fields of Cambodia, the ethnic
cleansing of Bosnia, the tribal barbarities of Rwanda, the proliferation of
abortion as a method of contraception, the normalizing of same-gender sexuality,
and the celebration of mass murder by jihad terrorists. We are hardly justified
in trusting current moral “values.” In current Western society, the concept
of goodness is associated with a homemaking guru’s statement, “It’s a good thing,”
in reference to her advice on living in gracious style, even as she was implicated
in an “insider-trading” stock scandal.

The idea that the church of Jesus Christ, which has always been defined by
the New Testament and not by the culture, could adopt such depraved standards
is almost unthinkable. Yet in many corners of the church, New Testament standards
have all but disappeared. Consider, for example, the case of Bill Phipps, moderator
of the United Church of Canada. Phipps said in a newspaper interview that he
does not believe Jesus Christ is God, or that Christ was bodily resurrected,
or that He is the only way to God. When faced with the inevitable public relations
problem his remarks had stirred, Phipps apologized for any pain felt by church
members, but he reiterated his unbelief. Such apostasy from “the faith which
was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) is indeed tragic. It causes
people to wonder how someone so devoid of Christian belief rose to a position
of leadership within a significant segment of the church.

The answer to how this could happen was not long in coming. After Phipps’s
remarks hit the media, the seventy-member general council of lay and clergy
members of the United Church of Canada met to consider their response to the
uproar. Should they remove from his position of spiritual leadership one who
was not “holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching”
(Titus 1:9)? Should they take steps to ensure that such a situation would never
arise again? They voted unanimously to support him and said his comments fall
“well within the spectrum of the United Church.”4 A denomination that could
pass such a resolution has more in common with the pluralism and relativism
of this age than with historic Christianity.

We will cite other examples of the unprecedented level of compromise with
the world. Such capitulation to a corrupt culture indicates an organized religious
structure that has little capacity to think biblically. For this reason, I believe
that the greatest threat to the church’s integrity is not methodological. It
is not difficult to identify “new-wave” churches that have abandoned long-practiced
methods of worship and instruction. Consider, for example, the “Christian raves”
or dance parties of Philadelphia’s “Club Worship.” D. J. Frank Horvath (also
known as Frankie Vibe) said, “We’re ministers on turntables. I can’t make you
believe, but I can make you dance yourself closer to God.”5 Dancing as a spiritual
discipline has doubtful claims as worship that honors and glorifies God as He
is revealed in Scripture. But I do not believe that these worship ravers pose
the greatest threat to the health of the church. Their idea is merely one symptom
of the root problem: sloppy biblical thinking. The church will survive such
experiments. However, if the church does not recover a biblical way of thinking,
it will continue its drift toward assimilation with a corrupt culture. An assimilated
church will become more and more difficult to differentiate from the world.
A church that thinks like the world will act like the world. Worldly thinking
already is rampant in the church.

So how do we develop a kind of thinking that deserves the name “Christian”?
We have to spend some effort understanding that common notion of philosophy
called a “worldview.” We often hear of this term, but what is a worldview? In
another book I have likened a worldview to a pair of sunglasses, the tint of
which colors the way we look at everything.6 Although the sunglasses analogy
makes that point, perhaps eyeglasses would be a more appropriate analogy. Sunglasses
soften reality for the convenience of the wearer, so they might be compared
to worldviews that are not based in truth. However, the biblical worldview brings
reality into perfect focus, as do prescription eyeglasses. The biblical worldview
helps us to see things as they really are.

Perhaps some additional definitions will help clarify:

[A worldview is] a more or less coherent frame of reference for all thought
and action. . . . A worldview is a set of presuppositions (assumptions which
may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously
or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic make-up
of our world.7

We all have values. We all have some viewpoint about what life is all
about. We all have some perspective on the world we live in. We are not
all philosophers but we all have a philosophy. Perhaps we haven’t thought
much about that philosophy, but one thing is certain—we live it out. . .
. The theories we live are the ones we really believe.8

A worldview is a set of beliefs about the most important issues in life.
The philosophical systems of great thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle
were worldviews. Every mature rational human being . . . has his or her
own worldview just as surely as Plato did. . . . Achieving awareness of
our worldview is one of the most important things we can do. . . . A worldview
. . . is a conceptual scheme by which we consciously or unconsciously place
or fit everything we believe and by which we interpret and judge reality.9

James Davison Hunter, in his provocative book Culture Wars, concluded that
the culture conflicts in the United States are a result of the interaction of
incompatible worldviews. Hunter named the two cultural polarities “orthodox”
and “progressive.” By “orthodox,” Hunter refers primarily to Judaism, Catholicism,
and Protestantism. He concludes:

What is common to all three approaches to orthodoxy . . . is the commitment
on the part of adherents to an external, definable, and transcendent authority.
Within cultural progressivism, by contrast, moral authority tends to be
defined by the spirit of the modern age, a spirit of rationalism and subjectivism.
What all progressivist worldviews share in common is the tendency to resymbolize
historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary
life.

Each side operates from within its own constellation of values, interests,
and assumptions. At the center of each are two distinct conceptions of moral
authority—two different ways of apprehending reality, of ordering experience,
of making moral judgments.10

Hunter’s research shows that both orthodox and progressive polarities now
exist inside the organized church. The fact that persons or groups are in the
church does not necessarily mean that they can be described as orthodox. Indeed,
they may be progressive, and thus, according to Hunter’s definition, have “the
tendency to resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions
of contemporary life” and “the tendency to translate the moral ideals of a religious
tradition so that they conform to and legitimize the contemporary zeitgeist”
(“spirit of the times”).11 The debacle within the United Church of Canada demonstrates
that progressives may not only be in the visible church; they may be leading
it.

In such a context, it is long past the time when Christians should be encouraged
to think biblically. A host of Christians have avoided serious thought about
the implications of their faith and the differences between biblical belief
and the zeitgeist. Some of these Christians know what they believe, but they
do not know why they believe it. Their faith comes across as hopelessly naive
in public conversation. This is because they have never done the work of developing
a Christian mind. This book is intended to help them in that great work.

Those who aspire to possess a Christian worldview must make a commitment
. . .

1. to
think in a manner that is consistent with the propositional truth of the Bible;

2. to
learn why the truth of the Bible is both reliable and rational;

3. to
understand the ways in which a biblical worldview differs from other worldviews;

4. to
live in accord with the truth of the Bible;

5. to
develop the ability to communicate to others coherently and compellingly the
basis and implications of a biblical worldview.

I will sketch the philosophical issues involved in the worldview debate,
but I am particularly interested in considering the ethical product of the worldview
clash, the ways in which philosophy affects behavior at the individual and societal
levels. As John Henry Newman put it, “Good thoughts are only good so far as
they are taken as means to an exact obedience, or at least this is the chief
part of their goodness.”12 This is where theory meets practice for most Christians,
and I am writing for Christians and Christian students, not for academicians.
I want to show Christians how differences in systems of morality arise from
different worldviews. I want to demonstrate that the Christian worldview and
its inherent system of morality make sense.

Carl F. H. Henry, quoted above, wrote of a “willset” as well as a mindset.
The latter leads inevitably to the former. The pages that follow will show that
an unprecedented level of immorality is being accepted and practiced within
the church because Christians have not developed a Christian view of the
moral issues of our time. They are not thinking biblically. This book is written
with the prayer that all the church will yet practice biblical thinking and
living, and will influence the culture to do the same.

2. I
borrowed this phrase, “the repeal of reticence,” from Rochelle Gurstein’s book
on the loss of modesty in Western culture, The Repeal of Reticence: America’s
Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation,
and Modern Art (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996).

3. James
W. Sire, Discipleship of the Mind: Learning to Love God in the Ways We Think
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990), 97.